Review: Ubuntu 10.04

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (aka Karmic) a few months ago, so when the new version 10.04 (aka Lucid) came out recently I eagerly upgraded. How is it?

A little more background will be helpful to understand my review. Ubuntu comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I have a newer computer so 64 bit is the natural choice, but I inadvertently installed Karmic 32 bit. After realizing that, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle of reinstalling just to get 64. When Lucid came out, I simply upgraded from Karmic. It turns out this didn't go very well because of the proprietary graphics driver I had installed to get all the nice graphical effects on the desktop. I ended up with broken packages that couldn't be fully uninstalled, nor fixed. Rather than live with the default and rudimentary default graphics driver, I did a clean install of Lucid. And while I was at it, I went up to 64 bit.

So the first thing I have to say is, use the 32 bit version. The 64 bit works well, but I have come across multiple little glitches in things that worked just fine on 32 bit.

• the java plug-in for the browser is only available for 32 bit architectures
• the Amazon MP3 downloader program is only available for 32 bit architectures
• firefox doesn't deal well with installing add-ons. Every time I add an add-on and restart firefox, the browser hangs. After killing the process and re-restarting, it runs fine.
• well, almost fine. I have not been able to get the Yahoo toolbar to work. I lasted on Lucid 32 bit long enough to run the browser and know that the toolbar worked just fine there, so it has to be with the 64 bit build of the program.
• most importantly for me, I have not been able to get Oblivion to play under wine on the new OS. I had it running just fine on Karmic 32 bit. On Lucid 64 the opening credits actually run more smoothly, but always hangs at the start menu. I've tried multiple versions of wine, and still no go.

Despite these issues, I'm sticking with 64 for now. I'm optimistic these things will be solved. They don't seem all that major that they won't be.

That pretty much sums up my negative comments about the OS, and they're not really comments about Lucid so much as 64 bit. Overall I'm still happy with it.

The big talk in the Ubuntu world about Lucid is that the window control buttons--minimize, maximize, close--have moved from their traditional position on the right side of the title bar to the left. This change triggered some let's just say passionate reactions, almost all against the change.

Some felt it emulates the Mac OS X desktop too much and that would be hard for Windows converts to adjust to. That's silly. First of all, the GNOME desktop is already strongly influenced by the Mac desktop, so it seems natural that this would eventually happen. As a Windows convert myself, the new user already has to adjust him- or her-self to so many differences with GNOME, that this is just one more. If you really don't like the Mac-influenced desktop, use KUbuntu, the Ubuntu variant with the KDE desktop (yes, that's redundant) that is much more Windows influenced.

Having used it, is it really all that big a deal? No. You get used to it. It's amazing how resistant people are to change. They will fight vigorously against it, and then find ways to adapt when it happens anyway. It turns out it's a simple configuration change to put the buttons back, but it's not really a big deal where they are. I had a harder time getting used to the system clock being at the top of the screen instead of the task bar at the bottom.

One of the more significant changes with Lucid is the whole "social from the start" theme, which essentially means a greater degree of integration between the desktop and social networking systems like facebook and twitter. This is primarily through the "MeMenu":



which allows you to post updates to those services right from the desktop. The design isn't very clean. You have a text box out in the middle of nowhere with no label or action button to give a hint as to what it's for. That's not very user-friendly. But it works. I can see this being the foundation of future enhancements that would even more integrate the system with social sites. It'll be interesting to see what that does.

It sounds weird, but I want to put in a plug for the scanning program that comes with the system. I have never had an easier or faster experience scanning pictures than with Lucid. In what would it take on Vista to scan one picture, I was able to do maybe three. The focus with Lucid was on user friendliness. That's really one of the main motivations behind Ubuntu period. But this is a simple yet perfect example of that at work.

In a previous post, I mentioned issues in Karmic with the CD/DVD drive. Those appear to have been fixed with Lucid. I have inserted several CDs and DVDs since installing and haven't had any problems. I always thought it was strange that in Karmic you could either eject the disk or unmount the drive. If you ejected, the drive would stay mounted and you wouldn't be able to use another disk. With Lucid only the eject option remains; apparently the OS now realizes that when you eject the disk, the drive is no longer part of the file system.

There aren't a lot of dramatic changes in Lucid relative to Karmic. That's not unexpected, given that Lucid is a long term support release. It looks like Maverick (the 10.10 release coming this October) will be a bit more ambitious. It's a great system that will meet most people's needs just fine, without anti-virus and all the other "joys" of Windows. Oh, and things seem to run a lot faster compared to Windows.

Now, if I could just get Oblivion to play.....

Update 5/15: I finally got Oblivion to play. I had to try numerous versions from the distribution site. With 1.1.25, I was able to finally play the game again. And honestly it plays better than I had it running on Karmic. The game looks much better than it did. The lighting actually works right, though that means I have to deal with dark caves again. But it's a go!

Ubuntu sound

In my last post, I mentioned one recurring problem that was driving me crazy with my new Ubuntu Linux installation: sound mysteriously dropping. At the time it appeared to be a problem recognizing the hardware, but that got fixed when I made sure each user's account had explicitly selected the appropriate hardware. But there was still the problem of audio just not working and the user having to reboot.

I haven't had the problem in a while but my son has on his account, so naturally I thought he was (inadvertently) doing something to mess it up. But this morning, I got hit with it again and so got to investigate. I kept messing with my sound preferences, but that didn't do anything. Finally I noticed my wife's account still had an active firefox process running, so I switched to her account and killed it. As soon as the process died, the banshee player I had started on my account started playing. At night, if I've been on facebook or something, I don't typically kill my browser, and that's apparently what's been hosing up my son's account, forcing him to reboot regularly and irritating me.

So apparently the sound system doesn't handle multiple users accessing it at the same time, at least not well. The lesson is, when you're done with your session, make sure all your desktop processes have been killed so that other users on the machine aren't negatively impacted.

Experience with Ubuntu

I recently wiped Windows Vista off my home PC and installed the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. I've been wanting to try out Linux for quite a while and with Vista being rather annoying and not wanting to spend $100+ to get Windows 7, I finally took the plunge.

Going in, my expectations were muted. I knew I wasn't going to be blown away by the system, that it would be such a superior experience over Windows. I expected some hiccups and some rough around the edges software. But I figured the system would be stable and easy to use, enough that we would forget we're using a new operating system in a short time.

When things work right, I get exactly that. The GNOME desktop is aesthetically pleasing, moreso than Windows to my eye. OK, that's in part because it comes with a built-in desktop background and screen saver made up of Hubble telescope images. But the windows just look nicer. Performance seems a bit snappier than Vista. It's easy to find and run the software you need. The media players--it came with Rhythmbox and I installed Banshee--are perfectly decent players. I wish they were smart enough to automatically import new files in the music library rather than rescanning, but that's the kind of unpolished aspects I expected. The system recognizes all the peripherals I've thrown at it without incident and mounts them easily. All in all, a pleasant experience.

Note my caveat, though: when things work right. What has been very surprising in the few days that I've been running the OS is how often things don't run right. I've seen two significant recurring issues.

As commented already, the system recognizes peripherals and mounts them accurately. That includes the CD/DVD drive. Put in a disk and voila, there it is. Unmounting the drive, on the other hand, is surprisingly sloppy. Ours is a family computer and so each member has his or her own account on the PC, and each of us typically stays logged in. We've done this since Windows 95 at the turn of the century (work computer) without problem. But here it's an issue.

My expectation is that if I eject the disk, the OS will automatically unmount the drive so that it can be used for a new disk. But that doesn't happen. If I eject the disk by pushing the eject button on the drive, the disk comes out (sometimes) but the drive stays mounted. If I try to unmount it, I get an error message telling me only some other user who is logged in can unmount it. Bizarre. So far I know everybody's password and so can switch to that user and take care of it. But it's not very user-friendly. And if one of the other users on the machines puts in a disk, they are in trouble.

Far more problematic are problems with audio. For reasons I have not yet discerned, there are times the machine simply seems to lose track of the speakers attached to the computer. If I bring up the sound options window, there are simply no output devices available. But only for some users. I can go on one account and see the them, and play music just fine. But switch to a different user and there's nothing, while earlier in the day that user ran just fine. So far this has happened on a daily basis, and the only solution I've come up with is the Windows-style reboot. I've worked with Unix for years and know that you should be able to run the OS for months on end without a reboot, and so having to reboot on a daily basis is quite aggravating.

I can probably live with the disk problem, because we don't do too many CDs or DVDs. But this audio thing, if I can't figure out the problem and a solution, could be something that drives me back to Windows. And that would be quite a shame.